Dr. Rowe's Favorite Texts to Teach
On this page, I've offered a different kind of archive: a small archive of just a few of my own favorite texts to teach and why I love to teach them. I've split the texts up by type of text, and I'll keep updating this list as I think of things. So keep coming back!
Picture Books
Title: The Arrival
Author: Shaun Tan
Illustrator: Shaun Tan
Publisher: Arthur A. Levine Books
Publication Year: 2006
Reason: This is technically marketed as a graphic novel, but I most often teach it as a picture book. This is a gorgeous wordless book about an immigrant coming to a new land where he does not know the language. I like this book for several reasons: 1) it introduces students to wordless picture books, which are an important part of the field; 2) the wordlessness of the book means that students experience the lack of language that many immigrants face on entering a new country (which is Tan's point), which is a great example of form reinforcing theme; 3) without words, students dig further down into the pictures and pick up more details.
Title: The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery
Author: Graeme Base
Illustrator: Graeme Base
Publisher: Harry N. Abrams Publishers
Publication Year: 1988
Reason: This picture book is exactly what is says it is: a mystery. Each page includes an extremely complex puzzle (such as deciphering Morse code or hieroglyphics) to help the reader solve the mystery, but there's also a simple visual clue that runs through the whole book. I love to teach this book because my adult students will struggle to figure out the complex puzzles for hours, but many small children, especially those who can't read yet, spot the visual clue and figure out the mystery very quickly. It's a great way to talk about how different people pay attention to different details.
Title: Rosita y Conchita: A Rhyming Storybook in English and Spanish
Author: Eric Gonzalez and Erich Haeger
Illustrator: Eric Gonzalez and Erich Haeger
Publisher: Muertoons
Publication Year: 2010
Reason: This picture book, about twin sisters after one of them has died, has a lot of heart and demonstrates to students that picture books can very effectively deal with serious issues such as death. It's also really effective to pair with picture book theory, especially to talk about the ways that language is presented since the book does include both English and Spanish but presents the languages visually differently.
Title: The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales
Author: Jon Scieszka
Illustrator: Lane Smith
Publisher: Viking Books
Publication Year: 1992
Reason: This is one of those books where there is just so much going on: you have fairy tales, adaptation theory, interesting use of illustration materials, narratological breaks, acknowledging the child reader as an intelligent and knowledgeable reader, and so much more. This book really does tick so many boxes and can be used for a variety of reasons.
Comics/Graphic Novels
Title: Lore Olympus
Creator(s): Rachel Smythe
Publisher: Webtoon
Publication Year: 2018-present
Reason: This is a web comic (that is now also being published as a traditional graphic novel). It's a fascinating retelling of the Persephone and Hades story, and it does a lot of really interesting things with color, lines, and iconicity. It's also one of the most well-known web comics in the United States and a great way to talk about the form of web comics.
Title: Ms. Marvel: No Normal
Creator(s): G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona
Publisher: Marvel
Publication Year: 2014
Reason: This is the first volume of the Ms. Marvel comics which follow Kamala Khan--a Pakistani-American teenager--as she becomes a superhero. This text includes a lot of the hallmarks of an origin story and even acknowledges the existence of other superheroes within the Marvel universe while also showing Kamala trying to navigate her Pakistani identity. All of the heroes she grew up idolizing are white, so she struggles to understand her own hero identity. This allows us to talk about the construction of the white superhero and how/why its slowly being dismantled.
Title: Nimona
Creator(s): Noelle Stevenson
Publisher: Quill Tree Books
Publication Year: 2015
Reason: This is a very quirky graphic novel that plays with expectations. The "good guys" are bad, the "bad guys" are good, and nothing is as it seems. This is such a great graphic novel to talk about character design and how so much character design is built on associations and assumptions that are deeply problematic at the societal level because this graphic novel forces you to realize that by the end of the book. This is a great example of form and theme coming together.
Children's Novels
Title: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Author: Lewis Carroll (preferably with the John Tenniel illustrations)
Publisher: various
Publication Year: 1865
Reason: I honestly don't teach a lot of classic children's literature (just because there's always such amazing new stuff coming out), but I do like teaching this one. It's a great introduction to nonsense and concrete poems. Plus this is the perfect text for talking about illustration and adaptation history. It's also a good way to talk through some of the concerns with problematic authors with a little distance, which sometimes helps.
Title: Frindle
Author: Andrew Clements
Publisher: Antheneum Books
Publication Year: 1998
Reason: This is a book about how language is made up, which is one of my favorite things to talk about, but it's also about child agency and about how adults aren't always right and children have the right to push back (though the ending does spoil that message just a little). I find it really empowering for kids, plus it packs a great message about language, which is wonderful.
Title: Locomotion
Author: Jacqueline Woodson
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Publication Year: 2010
Reason: This is a novel in verse that's great for a lot of reasons: it uses a lot of different poetry forms, so it's great for covering poetry forms; it deals with really serious real-life issues in realistic ways, demonstrating that young children can deal with these issues; and it shows the importance of giving young children a space to express themselves. It's a very versatile book in the classroom, and it's a beautifully written novel in verse.
Young Adult
Title: Cemetery Boys
Author: Aiden Thomas
Publisher: Swoon Reads
Publication Year: 2020
Reason: This is such a great read, and there's so much to talk about: the story centers around a trans protagonist and features a gay romance (that doesn't end in tragedy, which I think is worth a lot), the book is a great example of urban fantasy, it's deeply rooted in Latinx-American culture, it's full of tropes that it builds up just to dash away or play with, and, because it is being banned in schools, it's also a way to talk about banning and what is being lost in banning. Plus, it's just written really, really well. There's just a lot here to admire.
Title: The Hate U Give
Author: Angie Thomas
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publication Year: 2017
Reason: This book deals with real-life issues that can be extremely difficult to talk about but are nonetheless important to talk about. I have found that this book is a real eye-opener for many students and can make those important conversations easier to have. The writing is also compelling, and the characters and their trials all too familiar today. I tend to prefer fantasy, but this is a piece of realism that gripped even me. I do suggest content/trigger warnings on this book, just because some of the violence may be hard for violence survivors, but with that in mind, this is a great text to teach.
Title: Twilight
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown
Publication Year: 2006
Reason: This may seem like an odd choice, but it actually goes really well in the classroom (in my experience). Many girls and women (and boys and men) love this book and/or the films; many people hate it (for valid and not so valid reasons). It's a great text for asking students to recognize their emotional reactions to a text then think around them, to think about whether their reactions to a text are being colored by something they're reading into the text or by their own prejudices. It's also a great text to talk about romance tropes and/or fandom, especially since the concept of picking a romantic "team" was popularized with this series.
Canonical Works
Title: And Then There Were None
Author: Agatha Christie
Publication Year: 1939
Reason: This is one of the best-selling novels of all time, and there's a reason for it. The mystery is great, like all of Christie's mysteries, but I like to teach this one because what this mystery asks you to do, over and over again is to weigh different kinds of guilt against each other. We often do this in real life without thinking about it, but that's the heart of the story, and it brings up a lot of interesting conversations around morality. Warning: make sure to buy recent American copies. Older and British copies use derogatory terms that even Christie herself later edited out.
Title: A Christmas Carol
Author: Charles Dickens
Publication Year: 1843
Reason: This was one of Dickens' own favorite works. It's nice and short, which has some merit to it in an otherwise busy reading schedule. It has a fascinating publishing and adaptation history, and it is one of the texts that essentially established Christmas as a holiday, which is great for a cultural studies classroom. It's just a great little piece to cover a lot of history with.
Title: Pride and Prejudice
Author: Jane Austen
Publication Year: 1813
Reason: I enjoy teaching many of Austen's works, but this is my favorite. It's generally the one students have the most familiarity with, which helps, especially with the more reluctant readers. For those who love to read, many already love this book, which is also fun to teach. But I especially love to teach the adaptation history of this text, which is so interesting and so very intertextual. Even without that, there's a lot you can do to teach about gender and "polite society" in the early nineteenth century as well as subtle humor and shifting lenses for reading women writers.
Title: Romeo and Juliet
Author: William Shakespeare
Publication Year: 1597
Reason: I honestly think this is the best Shakespeare play to teach young people. At its heart, this play is about an older generation fighting so much that they refuse to hear that the younger generation has sorted things out and that the younger generation is willing to die to find peace and love. That's a message that I think young people today can really understand. There are also a ton of adaptations that are great to teach with it. My favorite two: Romeo + Juliet (with Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo), which uses only language from Shakespeare but updates the setting; and Gnomeo and Juliet, which, in my humble opinion, keeps the heart of Shakespeare's message, even with a different ending.
Title: A Study in Scarlet
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
Publication Year: 1887
Reason: This is the very first Sherlock Holmes mystery, one of the first English-language mysteries in the world. It's fun to teach because it doesn't read like mysteries today, and looking at how this book feels just vaguely wrong is a great way to work through what we expect mysteries to do. There have also been quite a few wonderful adaptations based on this particular adaptation and Sherlock Holmes in general that are great to teach and talk about how a character can change over time as our perception of concepts (such as "genius") change.
Film & TV
Title: Encanto
Studio: Disney
Publication Year: 2021
Reason: This is a beautiful movie that students really enjoy. There's also a lot you can do with it. It's a great way to talk about Disney's history of representation (and lack thereof), to talk about how the family has become central to the family animated film, to talk about musicals and how the form can be played with, to talk about magical realism and how what that can look like in children's media, and even to talk about how the COVID-19 pandemic affected how media was created and released.
Title: Sanjay's Super Team
Studio: Disney and Pixar
Publication Year: 2015
Reason: I use several different Pixar shorts in class to develop film analysis skills because they're short, so I can show the same short multiple times in class, asking students to do different work. I like this short in particular because there's a lot of detail that only becomes obvious on multiple viewings, so students begin to understand the value of multiple viewings and the other analysis techniques I'm teaching them. There are also cultural elements to the short that some students may not pick up on, no matter how many times they watch it, which either their classmates or I reveal to them, emphasizing the importance of research.
Title: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Studio: Sony, Marvel
Publication Year: 2018
Reason: This movie is great for talking about how metatextuality and how texts can reference not only their own textuality but also the form of other texts. This film changes animation styles to match various comics styles, fitting form to the concept of the multiple universes. The film also constantly breaks the fourth wall, talking directly to the viewer, which I like to talk about. Finally, this was one of the first films to feature a Black superhero, and it was the first to feature a young Afro-Latino hero. I use the film to start conversations about how whiteness has dominated film depictions of heroism and how/why that is changing.
Scholarship
Title: "How to Tame a Wild Tongue"
Author: Gloria E. Anzaldúa
Book: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Publisher: Aunt Lunte Books
Publication Year: 1987
Reason: All of Borderlands is great, but I really like teaching this chapter, especially to future teachers and anyone learning about language (you know, most ELAR students). It's scholarship, and Anzaldúa also includes her experience of growing up in the Rio Grande Valley and having to navigate multiple languages. Most importantly, this chapter discusses what it means to have everyone tell you your language is wrong, and I think it's important to understand what it's like to experience what she calls "Linguistic Terrorism" and how powerful simply having access to your language can be.
Title: "Introduction to Picturebook Codes"
Author: William Moebius
Journal: Word & Image, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 141-158
Publication Year: 1986
Reason: This is a foundational article in the theory of how we read and understand picture books. I like to use it even with other forms of visual media because it describes a lot of trends we see in everything from ads to films to memes. These are trends that students recognize as soon as they read Moebius' work, and I have found that the article helps them better articulate their own analysis of visual media.
Title: Picture This: How Pictures Work
Author: Molly Bang
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Publication Year: 1991
Reason: This book does a great job of explaining the psychology behind why pictures work the way they do. The book is presented in the form of a picture book and focuses on the form of the picture book, but its principles can be applied to many different visual media to better understand why our brains process and create images the way they do. Plus, it's a really fun read and is especially great for teaching people how to construct images.
Title: Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights
Author: Robin Bernstein
Publisher: NYU Press
Publication Year: 2011
Reason: I rarely teach this whole book, but I love teaching excerpts from it. In this book, Bernstein discusses different ways that race and childhood have been performed in the US and how those two concepts are inextricably linked. My favorite concept within the book is the idea of scriptive things--things that have a script that we are supposed to follow that users do and do not follow (she also develops this idea in an article, "Dances with Things: Material Culture and the Performance of Race", if you ever want to get at just that idea). Overall, it's a great study of how race (especially Blackness and whiteness) has been and continues to be tied to childhood, which can be useful in a lot of different contexts.
Title: "Risky Business: Talking about Children in Children's Literature Criticism"
Author: Marah Gubar
Journal: Children's Literature Association Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 450-457
Publication Year: 2013
Reason: This article has greatly influenced children's literature as a field, specifically how we talk about children, adults, and the audiences of children's literature. I like to use this to give students a way to talk about children in a knowledgeable way and also to give students an introduction to the state of the field.
Title: A Theory of Adaptation
Author: Linda Hutcheon
Publisher: Routledge
Publication Year: 2006
Reason: This is one of the most prominent pieces of adaptation scholarship and, in my opinion, one of the most readable pieces. It covers many different aspects of adaptation. Students can read just the introduction to get a basic idea of adaptation or read the whole book to go into different ways of theorizing adaptations.
Title: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Author: Scott McCloud
Publisher: Tundra Publishing
Publication Year: 1993
Reason: This is by no means the only piece of scholarship on comics nor even necessarily the best (there has been a LOT of great scholarship on comics in the last few decades). But, I like to use it because it is written in the form of comics, and it really seems to help students understand the concepts that McCloud is explaining. I sometimes also like to use excerpts from McCloud's Making Comics (2006), especially the piece on facial expressions, which students respond to really well.